Community Server
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Community Server is a social networking platform built to help users communicate more effectively with their customers. It helps you participate in the conversations that your customers are already having about your products or services.
For the last 3 years the team at Community Server has helped their customers understand and apply social networking and community solutions to their business. They have also helped them to realize the full potential of their audience. For example, they helped Microsoft grow their blog community to over 350 million pages views per-month.
From a cost point of view, adding Community Server is an effective and low cost way to increase the traffic to a website. Sources such as Google ads work great for driving in interested customers, but social networking tools can almost guarantee your site's traffic to increase exponentially.
Before beginning to work with Community Server, we need to complete certain initial steps such as installation and configuration of the databases. This tutorial demonstrates all the required steps involved with setting up Community Server using Windows and Web-based installation file formats. Towards the end of this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to test the installation, and also explore the options included inside the Control Panel Dashboard of Community Server.
Contents |
[edit] Prerequisites
In order to install and run Community Server, you require access to a set of software as listed below:
| System/Software | Requirements | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Production | Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2000 | ||
| Development | Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 | ||
| Internet Information Services (IIS) | IIS 5.1 or greater | ||
| .NET Framework | 1.1 or greater | ||
| Database | SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, or SQL Server 2005 Express Edition | ||
| Development Environment | Visual Studio .NET 2003, Visual Studio 2005, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition |
Any one of the development environments listed above will be required for customization of the source code using Community Server Software Development Kit (SDK).
Note. This tutorial assumes that you have installed .NET Framework 1.1 and Community Server 2.1. However, Community Server 3.0, which is the next release, only supports .NET Framework 2.0 or greater.
[edit] Downloading Community Server
The first step that you need to follow is to properly obtain the required software from the official website, http://www.communityserver.org. From the home page, locate the Downloads link to find a list of all the latest installations and other companion files, including Community Server Software Development Kit (SDK) as noted earlier. You can download the Express Edition, which is available free of cost.
Before initiating a download, you must register on the site. For this purpose, navigate to the above-mentioned site, and click on the link titled Join, located on the extreme top of the right-hand side of the page as shown below:
You need to enter the requested details such as Sign in Name, Password, and Email Address. For the purpose of our discussion, we will give the sign-in name as csbook. You should enter the password and email address twice and also pick up your preferred Timezone. After entering all the required information, click the Join Now button to proceed further with the registration process. The button will be enabled only if you enter all the required information on the page. If the registration is successful, you will view a page as shown in the following screenshot and you will be signed in automatically.
Note. You can browse the Downloads page without registration, but you will be able to download the files only if you register and sign in to the site.
The top right side portion of the page will now read as Signed in as << User_Name >> as shown in the following screenshot:
[edit] Install Options
Before downloading the required file for installation, you should locate it properly. For this purpose, click the Downloads link from the top navigation bar. Initially, you will be presented with a page that displays a list of all the popular downloads. In order to view the installation files for Community Server 2.1, you need to expand the tree labeled Current Releases and select the option titled Community Server.
Community Server is available in two different install optionsWindows Installer (MSI Format) and Web Installer (ZIP Format). Let us examine the download process involved with each of these file formats in detail.
[edit] Using Windows Installer to Download Community Server
On clicking the link titled Community Server 2.1 (MSI) - ASP.NET 1.1 from the Downloads page as described earlier, a screen as shown in the screenshot below is displayed:
Note. If you wish to download the installation file for ASP.NET 2.0, then you should click the link titled Community Server 2.1 (MSI) - ASP.NET 2.0.
The download process will be started as soon as you click the Download button, and will be completed within few minutes depending upon the speed of your Internet connectivity. You should then execute the file in order to install Community Server. It is not possible to use the installer if you want to upgrade the existing version of Community Server to a new version or to set it up in a shared web hosting environment. It is only oriented for fresh installation of Community Server either in a local system or in an intranet environment.
[edit] Using Web Installer to Download Community Server
The web-based installation package is ideal for setting up Community Server either in a local system or in a remote web server. In order to download the installation file, navigate to the Downloads page as explained earlier and click the link titled Community Server 2.1 (Web Install) - ASP.NET 1.1. A similar screen to that shown on the previous page will be displayed.
Note. If you wish to download the installation file for ASP.NET 2.0, then you should click the link titled Community Server 2.0 (Web Install) - ASP.NET 2.0.
We will examine the process involved with the installation of Community Server using the two different formats discussed above later in this article.
[edit] Installing Community Server
We have now downloaded the required files for installation of Community Server. The next step is to properly run the setup to complete its installation. We will examine the installation process involved with both file formats as mentioned above, in detail.
[edit] Installing Community Server Using the Windows Installer
Since the Windows Installer file format comes in a zipped format, you need to extract the content of it to a location, preferably in a new folder on your hard drive. Once the file has been unzipped, a new file with the name communityserver_2_1_aspnet11 will be added to the folder in which you extracted the ZIP file. The installation file is a Microsoft Windows Installer Package and hence you can directly start the installation process by double-clicking on it.
Note. In order to extract the contents of a ZIP file, you can either use the built-in compression utility available with the Windows Operating System or one of the third-party software such as WinZip (http://www.winzip.com) or JustZIPit (http://www.download.com/JustZipIt/3000-2250-10222610.html).
You will then be presented with a series of wizards. You have to follow the instructions specified on the screen to properly install the application. You will be required to accept a license agreement and should also specify a location on your hard drive where the application will be installed. You can also choose the default location. Finally, the installation will be started and the wizard will display the installation progress.
[edit] Configuring Community Server
Once the installation has been successfully completed, the wizard will automatically prompt you to configure Community Server. You need to again go through a series of steps to complete the configuration. The wizard will prompt you to specify the location of the virtual directory, database credentials, and administrator's login information. You can give any meaningful name in Install to the virtual folder field on the Web Server Setup screen but the name should not clash with any of the previous installations. After gathering the requested information, the wizard will automatically execute database scripts, which include Tables and Stored Procedures and will prepare the application ready for launch.
Note. A Virtual Directory is a folder on your hard drive mapped to the Internet Information Services (IIS) on your system.
[edit] Connecting to the Database
During the configuration process, you will be asked to specify the required credentials to connect to the SQL Server database as shown in the following screenshot. Firstly, you need to specify the server name or IP address. By default, the server name is (local). You should substitute the Server Name field with the correct value if you are using Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
Note. You can retrieve the server name of your SQL Server 2005 installation from the SQL Server Management Studio (Start | All Programs | Microsoft SQL Server 2005 | SQL Server Management Studio) login screen.
Instead of creating a new database using SQL Server, you can directly specify the database name along with the required Username and Password. The wizard will automatically create the specified database and Community Server will be installed under that database.
From the screenshot opposite, you should note that the Username for setting up the SQL Server database is sa, which stands for System Administrator. The sa, or equivalent account, should only be used for setting up the database, not as the login with which Community Server communicates with the database. In the next screen, you will be required to choose either Windows Authentication or SQL Authentication. For the purpose of our discussion, you should select the option titled Use SQL Authentication and supply the same username and password as you gave in the above step.
[edit] Windows Authentication vs. SQL Server Authentication
Windows integrated authentication is the preferred method for running Community Server. You should configure a single Windows user account for your Community Server system that Community Server can use to communicate with the database. Ideally, this is the same account that IIS uses to run the Community Server application; by default this will be either: ASPNET (Windows 2000 Server) or the Network Service group (Windows Server 2003). SQL Server authentication is used when Windows authentication is not available.
[edit] Configuring the Administrator Account
Once the required database has been successfully created, Community Server will automatically prompt you to specify certain information such as username, password, and email address as shown in the following screenshot overleaf. You will later on use these credentials to log in to the site as an administrator.
Note. Make sure to specify a password that satisfies the condition listed above in red color. The wizard will not proceed further until you specify a password in the correct format.
After the completion of the configuration, the wizard automatically prompts you to launch the site as shown in the following screenshot.
You can view the installation log by selecting the link View Installation Log. The log file specifies the start and end time of various actions performed by the Windows Installer during the installation process.
[edit] Launching Community Server
Community Server will automatically launch in your default browser as seen in the following screenshot, if you had checked the Launch Community Server option during the installation process.
The whole installation process has been completely managed by a series of wizards, and there is no need for any manual intervention, even for creation of the database. As noted earlier in this article, the above installation process is oriented only for setting up Community Server either locally or in an intranet environment.
On a remote web server, you have to manually install Community Server using the web-based installer, which is available in ZIP format. You can also use the installer for local installation but you should follow certain steps as explained in the next section.
[edit] Installing Community Server Using the Web Installer
Firstly, you have to download the installation file and extract the contents to the root directory (Inetpub/wwwroot), as explained previously. In case you plan to install Community Server on a remote web server then you will be required to upload the folders and files inside the Web folder to the wwwroot directory of the appropriate domain. In some servers, you will be required to upload the files inside httpdocs folder.
Note. Refer to Appendix A of the Source book for more information regarding how to properly deploy Community Server in different environments.
As we discussed earlier, there are separate builds available for ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 for version 2.1 of Community Server. We will make use of the installation package meant for ASP.NET 1.1 to demonstrate the installation process in this section. Locate the downloaded file on your hard drive after downloading it and extract the contents of the folder.
The extracted folder contains two folders named SqlScripts and Web, some license agreement files (EULA), and a readme file. The SQLScripts folder contains a number of SQL script files that are mainly used for upgrading from a previous version of Community Server to the current version, and not for a fresh installation.
The folder named Web contains lots of files and folders, which are required for successfully running Community Server. You need to copy the contents of this folder either inside the root directory of your local system (Inetpub/wwwroot), or upload inside the root directory (wwwroot or httpdocs) on a remote web server. For the purpose of our discussion, we will examine the installation process as if you are performing it in a local system.
[edit] Creating a Database Using SQL Server
The next step in the installation process is to create a SQL Server database using SQL Server. You can use either SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005 to create a database. For the purpose of our discussion, we will create a database using SQL Server 2005. It includes a robust interface for the creation and management of databases named SQL Server Management Studio. You can launch it from Start | All Programs | Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and log in by supplying the correct Server name, Login, and Password.
Note. You should use the credentials of the default administrator account, which you gave at the time of SQL Server 2005 installation, for the purpose of database creation.
Once you log in to the management studio, pull down the Databases tree from the left side and right-click on it. Select the menu item named New Database as shown in the following screenshot:
Note. To create a database using SQL Server 2000, log in to the Query Analyzer as an administrator and supply the following command:
create database Your_Database_Name. Alternatively, you can also use Enterprise Manager to create the required database.
The New Database dialog box pops up. Enter the required database name and click the OK button. We will use CommunityServer as a name for our database. SQL Server 2005 will show the progress while the database is being created and will display the same under the Databases tree. You can now disconnect from the management studio by selecting File | Disconnect Object Explorer menu option.
Note. SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is available as an alternative to the full blown developer edition of SQL Server 2005. Even though it is free of cost, the main disadvantage of express edition is that the size of each database is restricted to 4 GB. In order to use it, you should download and install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (53.8 MB) and SQL Server Management Studio Express (38.5 MB) from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/download/. Once you have installed both of them, you can log in to SQL Server Management Studio Express by supplying the credentials that you gave at the time of installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. The look and feel of the studio interface looks similar to that of developer edition and the process of database creation is also the same as explained above.
We have now successfully created a database required for the installation of Community Server. The next step is to launch the web-based installation wizard to install the application.
Community Server ships with a built-in web-based installer along with the web installer package in ZIP format. It will automatically create the required tables and stored procedures for the successful installation of the application.
[edit] Using the Installation Wizard
By default, the Installation Wizard is disabled and you should enable it before attempting to install Community Server. To enable the installer, you need to navigate to the folder Installer inside the Web directory and open the default.aspx file. You can open the file using any editor of your choice such as Notepad, Visual Studio 2005, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.
In the default.aspx file, locate the statement
bool INSTALLER_ENABLED = false;
You should modify the value of the above statement to true to enable the installer. You are now ready to launch the web-based installer to install Community Server.
For the purpose of our discussion, we have modified the name of the folder Web to cs21. Hence, we need to enter http://localhost/cs21/Installer/default.aspx on the browser to launch the installation wizard. Now, you will have to fix an error message (see the following screenshot) before proceeding further with the installation process.
This error can be easily resolved by navigating to the folder cs21 using Internet Information Services (IIS) and making it as an application.
Launch Internet Information Services (IIS) by navigating to Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools. Double-click the icon labeled Internet Information Services and pull down the server name from the left side panel. Expand the tree labeled Web Sites | Default Web Site and locate the folder cs21. Right-click on it and select Properties. The following dialog box is displayed:
Click the Creat'e' button to transform the folder cs21toan application. The Application name field will now display our folder name.
Note. You will not have to perform this task if you host Community Server on a remote web server since the root virtual directory will be automatically enabled as an application at the time of creation of the site.
We are now ready to launch the installer by navigating to http://localhost/cs21/installer/default.aspx.You will be required to walk through a series of wizards to proceed with the Community Server installation. You need to click the Next button on each screen to proceed further with the installation process.
Note. If you have installed .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 and version 2.0 is your default framework then the system will throw a The resource cannot be found error message. In order to resolve this error, click the button captioned Configuration from the IIS Properties dialog and double click the extension .aspx. The Add/Edit Application Extension Mapping dialog pops up. In the Executable field, modify the .NET Framework version number from 2.0.50727 to 1.1.4322.
During the course of installation, you will be asked to supply the required credentials for connecting to the SQL Server database as shown in the following screenshot:
You need to enter either the actual server name of your local SQL Server installation or the IP address that needs to be connected to if you are running the installer on a remote server. The IP address should be that of your remote SQL Server installation, and not that of the web server. Nowadays, the majority of hosts separate web and database servers to increase the performance of websites. You will need to contact your service provider if you are not sure as to what to give as the server name. We have already discussed Windows Authentication and SQL Server Authentication. If you use SQL Server Authentication then you should supply the required username and password.
If the entered credentials are correct then the installation wizard will automatically populate the SQL Server 2005 databases available on the system. For the purpose of our discussion, we earlier created a database named CommunityServer. If you are running the installation on a remote web server, then the wizard will display the list of all databases available on the remote database server. Click on the Next button to continue with the installation process after selecting the appropriate database from the list.
The wizard automatically prompts you to choose the installation options as shown in the following screenshot. It is recommended you checkmark all the options for the sake of simplicity.
After investigating the above options, click Next button to proceed further. The wizard will prompt you to enter the requested information for the creation of an administrator account such as Username, Password, and an Email address as shown in the next
screenshot. You will need to log in using these credentials after successful installation to manage Community Server. It is highly advisable to checkmark the entry titled Create Sample Data so that the wizard will automatically create a sample blog and a photo gallery. You can simply leave the Community Url field as it is without any modifications. Community Server automatically populates this field with the required web address as shown in the following screenshot:
The installer will automatically create tables, stored procedures, and the required sample data as soon as you click the Next button from the screen in the above screenshot. This process may take some time to complete, and a page with the required link for navigating to the home page will be displayed after the completion of the installation process.
The remote web server sometimes displays a timeout error when you perform the above installation step. In such a case, you should attempt to perform the installation at a time when the server traffic is not at its peak. You must either delete the current database and create a new one when you install again or just create a new one at the time when you again perform the installation process. Otherwise, the installation will not be successful.
You have now successfully completed the installation of Community Server.
Note. If you used the Web Installer for performing the installation process, it is highly recommended that you remove the folder Installer. Alternatively, you can disable the installation wizard by undoing the changes we made to the default.aspx file earlier. This will enable you to again run the installation wizard if required at a later point of time.
[edit] Testing the Installation of Community Server
Since we have successfully completed the installation process, let us now look at how to test and view the final output. For this purpose, navigate to http://localhost/cs21 using your browser.
You may receive a Directory Access Denied error message when you attempt to access the site using the above-mentioned address. To fix this error first navigate to Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Internet Information Services. Then locate the folder cs21, right-click, select Properties, and then choose the Documents tab as shown in the screenshot below:
Initially, default.aspx is not added as a default document inside the default documents list box. You can add it by selecting the Add button and entering the required file name. You will not get the above-mentioned error message when you install Community Server using Windows Installer. This is because the installer automatically configures the relevant Virtual Directory during the installation process.
We have already seen the final output earlier (see the screenshot that is a 'Welcome' page, in the section Launching Community Server) when we discussed the installation of Community Server using Windows Installer file package. At the top of the home page, you will see five links as shown below:
You should note that a sample Blog and a Photo gallery have been automatically created by the installer. You can set up remaining applications such as forums or photo and file galleries using the administration control panel.
[edit] Navigating the Control Panel Dashboard
The Control Panel is the main brain behind the working of Community Server. In order to work with the Control Panel, you need to log in as an administrator. This can be done by clicking on the Sign in link located on the top of the page and by entering your administrator username and password, which you gave at the time of installation.
As soon as you log in, you will be able to view a new link titled Control Panel as shown in the screenshot below:
If you click the Control Panel link, you will see lot of settings for managing all the applications included with Community Server. These settings are displayed in a page titled Dashboard, which displays all the required functionalities for managing the site. The following table shows a list of all the options included on the Dashboard along with its purpose:
| Control Panel Dashboard options | Purpose | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Membership | To manage users registered on the site | ||
| My Blog(s) | To create and edit post To manage comments | ||
| Blog Administration | To add new blogs To manage permissions | ||
| My Photo(s) | To add new photos To manage albums and comments | ||
| Photo Administration | To create new gallery To manage permissions | ||
| My File(s) | To upload and manage files To manage sub-folders and comments | ||
| File Administration | To create new folders To manage permissions | ||
| Forums Moderation | To moderate forums | ||
| Forums Administration | To create new forums To manage permissions | ||
| Reader Administration | To manage external feeds To manage permissions | ||
| System Administration | To manage the whole site To generate and view reports |
You can also individually explore these options by clicking on the relevant links located on the top navigation bar inside the control panel as shown in the following screenshot:
On the right side of the Dashboard, you will find announcements, which are updated regularly by Telligent, and also the version number of Community Server. You can return to the home page at any time by clicking on the link labeled Exit Control Panel and Return to Site located on the top portion of the control panel dashboard as shown in the screenshot below:
[edit] Summary
In this tutorial, we looked at the installation of Community Server using both the Windows Installer (MSI) and Web Installer (ZIP) packages. We also saw how to load Community Server after its successful installation and also briefly explored the options found inside the control panel dashboard.
[edit] Source
The source of this content is Chapter 2: Working with Content of Community Server Quickly by Anand Narayanaswamy (Packt Publishing, 2006).
